American Policy of Arming Arabs Criticized in Congress

July 30, 1954

WASHINGTON (Jun. 30)

House minority whip John McCormack, Massachusetts Democrat, today took the floor of the House to deliver an address criticizing the Republican administration’s policy of arming Arabs hostile to Israel, and calling Secretary of State Dulles’ new “impartial” policy in the Near East an “ignominious failure.”

Rep. McCormack said, in the course of a discussion of the foreign aid program, that Secretary Dulles “has supplied the Arab leaders with a rationale for the continuance of their intransigent attitudes and actions.” Because of the new policy of the United States, McCormack said, “hopes for peace become dimmer in the area.”

The wisdom of arming Iraq was questioned by Rep. McCormack, who indicated that the administration has ignored Iraq’s “political instability, repression of minorities, and the abortive pro-Nazi revolt of 1941.”